Choosing a chip, board and RAM - best bang for buck for under €500?

ballyargus

Currently looking at the following components:

Chip: AMD Ryzen 5 1600X Desktop CPU -- £136
Motherboard: MSI X370 GAMING PRO CARBON Socket AM4 -- £109
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4 3000 MHz -- £130
Cooler: Artic Freezer 33 -- £30

All from Amazon. Is the best bang for buck I can get for under €500?

Moon54

The Ryzen comes with a pretty decent CPU fan if you wanted to save a bit, and maybe use the extra cash to up the CPU to Ryzen 5 2600 (or 2600x).

I'm not sure what your use case would be, general, gaming or productivity etc but I would definitely try and go for the best CPU you can
and maybe match it with a motherboard that fits in the budget. There's a good selection to choose from now.

RAM is spot on, but depending on you use case it could be dropped to 8GB if needed to make room in the budget,
and upgrade later on to 16GB. (when hopefully it is cheaper)

Hardware Unboxed had a good vid recently about the Ultimate Bang for Buck build.

Also an SSD boot drive should be considered in the build, best bang for buck upgrade of all.
Those 120Gb Kingston ones can be got on Amazon for as low as £20 now.

ballyargus

Moon54 wrote: »

The Ryzen comes with a pretty decent CPU fan if you wanted to save a bit, and maybe use the extra cash to up the CPU to Ryzen 5 2600 (or 2600x).

I'm not sure what your use case would be, general, gaming or productivity etc but I would definitely try and go for the best CPU you can
and maybe match it with a motherboard that fits in the budget. There's a good selection to choose from now.

RAM is spot on, but depending on you use case it could be dropped to 8GB if needed to make room in the budget,
and upgrade later on to 16GB. (when hopefully it is cheaper)

Hardware Unboxed had a good vid recently about the Ultimate Bang for Buck build.

Also an SSD boot drive should be considered in the build, best bang for buck upgrade of all.
Those 120Gb Kingston ones can be got on Amazon for as low as £20 now.

Thanks. I already have a 500gb Samsung SSD that will work nicely as boot drive. So it's worth gunning for the 2600 or 2600x? I'll have a nose

TerrorFirmer

If it's a >60hz build, I'd second the 2600X, but for a standard 1080p/1440p/4k 60fps build, the 1600X is fine and it is a good chunk cheaper.

ballyargus

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

If it's a >60hz build, I'd second the 2600X, but for a standard 1080p/1440p/4k 60fps build, the 1600X is fine and it is a good chunk cheaper.

1440p monitor at 60hz. Single EVGA GTX 1070 card going in with it.

TerrorFirmer

Yeah you're fine with the 1600X so. The difference between both CPU's for gaming is irrelevant entirely for 60hz gaming as the average frames of both are way, way far north of that.

I've a 144hz display and a 1700X, the 2700X is about 10% faster at stock for example, but you're talking 100fps vs 110fps in a lot of games.

ballyargus

the added price of the Cooler for the X seems to make the price difference negligible on amazon

TerrorFirmer

Ah, forgot that aspect. The stocker cooler on the 2600X is decent, I suppose you could weight up 1600X + better cooler v 2600X and stock cooler.

Again at 60hz, I'd probably prefer the 1600X plus a good, silent cooler vs the 2600X with stock....but either's a good option really, and the stock cooler is decent.

TitianGerm

ballyargus wrote: »

Currently looking at the following components:

Chip: AMD Ryzen 5 1600X Desktop CPU -- £136
Motherboard: MSI X370 GAMING PRO CARBON Socket AM4 -- £109
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4 3000 MHz -- £130
Cooler: Artic Freezer 33 -- £30

All from Amazon. Is the best bang for buck I can get for under €500?

I just got an email from Aria and they have a Asus Prime B450 mobo and an Ryzen 2600x bundle for £275.

Would that be worth looking at for you? It's only £30 more than the prices you listed.

Anima

I really don't know why anyone would game at 60hz. Unless it's just RTS or something? It's probably one of the best enhancements. I'd easily drop resolution and visual quality to game at 100hz/144hz.

I'd reconsider tbh!

ballyargus

I had a 144hz monitor and felt that colour representation was sickening. So I reverted

TerrorFirmer

ballyargus wrote: »

I had a 144hz monitor and felt that colour representation was sickening. So I reverted

I don't quite get that - refresh time has nothing to do with that, unless you had a bad monitor.

If you were unhappy with color reproduction, it'd be the same whether at 30, 60, or 144hz.

I really don't know why anyone would game at 60hz. Unless it's just RTS or something? It's probably one of the best enhancements. I'd easily drop resolution and visual quality to game at 100hz/144hz.

I'd reconsider tbh!

In fairness he has a budget, a good quality 1440p/144hz monitor would be his entire budget for the cpu/board/ram.

K.O.Kiki

Definitely spend the extra for Ryzen 2600; better memory support & slightly higher overclocking boost.

ballyargus

It was a TN panel. I thought it looked dreadful. Spent ages calibrating but found nothing satisfactory so I reverted to a nice IPS

Anima

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/amd-bundle-amd-ryzen-5-2600-gigabyte-x370-gaming-3-team-group-ram-free-240gb-ssd-online-only-bu-01f-am.html

What do you guys think of this bundle?